PM Ponta in Bratislava for Friends of Cohesion Policy meeting

Romanian PM Victor Ponta is paying a visit to Bratislava on Thursday and Friday where he is to attend a new Friends of Cohesion Policy meeting in which the Prime Ministers of the EU member states that are part of the group discuss the issue of community funds in the presence of the European Commission President and the European Parliament President.The Prime Ministers of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Hungary, as well as the representatives of Cyprus, Greece and Lithuania, took part in the meeting.“The high-level meeting seeks to promote the common interests of the Friends of Cohesion Policy group, particularly in what concerns the issue of maintaining an adequate financing for the cohesion policy. The meeting will represent an important moment in the stage of finalizing EU-level negotiations on the Multi-annual Financial Framework 2014-2020. The relevance that the cohesion policy has for new EU member states resides in its goal of lowering development discrepancies between various regions, of consolidating economic and social cohesion, relying mainly on financial solidarity, namely on the redistribution of a part of the EU budget towards less prosperous regions and social groups,” a government communiqué reads.